PNP nearing 50 percent of target in drug war

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is nearing 50 percent of its target barely three months of its six-month deadline to account for all the drug pushers and users in the country.

But that is if the 1.8 million drug pushers and users declared by PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa would be the benchmark. President Duterte earlier said that there are some 3.7 million Filipinos who are hooked to illegal drugs.

Based on the PNP data, a total of 712,730 suspected drug pushers and users have already surrendered since July 1 when the campaign against illegal drugs went all-out.

On the other hand, a total of 1,506 suspected pushers and users were killed while 16,891 were arrested in various police operations across the country.

The figures, however, do not include the 1,571 deaths perpetrated by suspected vigilante groups, most of them are being linked to illegal drugs.

Dela Rosa, however, expressed concerns on the rate of the illegal drugs war campaign in the past few weeks where the number of those surrendered remained stationary between 650,000 to 700,000 mark.

“We need to exert more effort, we need to be more aggressive in this campaign because we need to reach 1.8 million,” said dela Rosa. (Aaron B. Recuenco)

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malcolmkyle

The Rome Statute defines murder or persecution that is knowingly “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population” as a crime against humanity. The wide-scale extrajudicial killings carried out under Duterte’s orders meet that definition. Duterte will soon stand trial in the International Court of The Hague for the unlawful murder of many thousands of civilians.

Dear people of the Philippines:

An elected government should not declare war and militarize against its own people. Historically, the use of force to address/prohibit non-violent, victimless activities has only ever produced negative results. Such a violent crusade against civilians invariably evolves into a full-blown civil war.

It is now obvious (at least to the rest of humanity) that you have foolishly elected a psychotic despot for president. This means that you no longer have due process, constitutionally protected rights or fair trials in a public forum. Suspicion or rumor is now all that’s required to terminate the life of any citizen.

Nowhere on this planet has any nation ever had success with the policy of drug prohibition. Many of your villages, towns and cities will be turned into killing fields. Hundreds of thousands of you may now die. Your most precious institutions and possessions will be destroyed—but the drugs, the corruption and the violence will still be there and the world will finally realize how dangerous and utterly destructive prohibition really is.

You are actually in the process of destroying your own society and nothing can change your fate. Every one of you is now vulnerable to deadly attack; world-wide drug prohibition has finally reached its inevitable conclusion.

Thank you for helping to teach the world this powerful lesson with the blood of your own families!

WJGBalderama

Correct me if I am wrong: someone can be charged, tried, and sentenced for ‘crimes against humanity’ in absentia.